Which way to the locker room? (part 2)

Before I get into the promised discussion of Danica Patrick, here’s a photo of David Beckham because, hell, it’s only fair. This shot is from the New York Daily News slide show of the Hottest Male Athletes.

Oddly, while Bleacher Report.com had no problem finding a hundred hot female athletes for its list, the Daily News could only come up with thirty-nine males.

It’s also funny is that while all of the BR babes are wearing almost no clothes, most of the Daily News hunks are wearing sports gear. Is Tony Romo in full pads sexy?

I don’t know. What I do know is that Danica Patrick looks pretty good in her racing suit (though I couldn’t find any shots of her wearing just flame-retardant Nomex underwear).

No. 42 on BR’s list, Patrick has been a lightning rod for controversy. NASCAR driver Kyle Petty called her “a marketing machine,” and said that when she doesn’t do well on the track, no one can blame the car, the engine or the team.

Janet Guthrie, a prime-time driver thirty years ago, had reservations about Patrick’s move to NASCAR, and driver Juan Montoya said, “Danica, I think she’s got the talent and everything but I don’t think she knows what she’s getting into.”

BR’s take is that Patrick’s fame owes less to her success as a driver as it does to her “selling herself as a sex symbol.” Still, the website said Patrick’s critics are jealous—men because they can’t make the money she pulls down, and women because “they wish they could look this good.”

Patrick talked about being a sex symbol when she appeared in Sport Illustrated’s 2009 swimsuit issue.

Of course, the magazine asked her questions it doesn’t ask all its subjects, like, “Do you think modeling is hard?” “What makes you feel sexy?” “People have said I look like…” and “If you had to play matchmaker for a day, what celebrities would you pair up?”

Do you think SI cares about what makes Michael Phelps feel sexy? Or who people think Kobe Bryant looks like? Or which celebrities Derek Jeter would match up?

For the record, Patrick’s answers were, respectively: Modeling lets her enjoy her feminine side, having her husband acknowledge how she looks in a “nice dress and a pair of sexy high heels,” and Demi Moore. She evaded the stupid matchmaker question.

She also said that happiness is love, “whether it’s just having friends and family around or racing or a new car or pair of shoes or the man you’re married to.”

So she’s a romantic.

BTW, she also said her choice for World’s Hottest Athlete is a guy who’s “pretty good-looking, confident and comfortable…not real cocky…and doesn’t have to try that hard.”

I was glad to read that, because those are all qualities I’ve given my Fast Lane hero Clay.